Thursday, January 24, California Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013. Before 10 assault weapons, the Senator delineated some 150 firearms to be prohibited from sale, transfer, import and manufacture for their, ‘dangerous, military-style’ nature. The ban does provide exemptions for thousands of hunting and sporting rifles as well as guns operated manually by bolt, pump, lever and slide-action.

It also provides exemption for weapons used by government officials, law enforcement and retired law enforcement.

Senator Feinstein defended her assault on automatic and semi-automatic weapons by invoking the December 14 Elementary School massacre at Sandy Hook. “The future of the nation is at stake,” stated the Senator, magnifying the bill as a package to stop mass-murders by stemming the deadly tide of their weapons of choice.

The same day of Senator Feinstein’s presentation, the conservative Breitbart News reported at least two stories where the assault rifle AR-15 Bushmaster deterred home invasions by its supremacy over concealed arms used by would-be robbers.

The AR-15 was the weapon used by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook to senselessly massacre small school children.

To Senator Feinstein’s credit, her bill does not seem to discriminate between concealed weapons and rifles, targeting at least 30 automatic pistols. Indeed, Senator Feinstein’s 2013 Assault Weapons Ban prohibits magazines carrying more than 10 bullets, hoping to belittle the god-complex of dangerous sociopaths that enjoy dealing death at random.

However, what will an assault weapons ban really accomplish? Besides further stigmatizing guns and those that use them, it reframes usage as a criminal activity rather than an American right.

Chicago, for example, boasts some of the strictest gun laws and saw record gun-related homicides this year upwards of 500.

Famously, Major Rudy Giuliani combated the New York crime wave by placing more guns on the street by prioritizing policing and the NYPD. He went on to be voted the second most popular Major in the history of New York.

Senator Feinstein’s home state of California faces precinct closures and record gun sales as citizens seek to comfort their nerves by replacing an active police force with a paranoid home defense. Interestingly enough, cash strapped California continues to pay top dollar to psychiatrists, hoping that preventative medicine might cope with the scourge of criminalism.

But tax funded million dollar salaries to penitentiary psychiatrists and preventative gun bans cannot hope to replace the heart and soul of a humble and dedicated armed police force facing a large armed citizenry sending gun sales nation-wide to record heights.

Gun sales rose in 48 out of 50 states in 2012, and the December statistics for background checks rose in every single state of the Union. Last December, sales numbers tell the story of a scared constituency; the top 5 states recorded 60% growth in the wake of Sandy Hook.

As the country mourned, Massachusetts alone saw a 36% rise in gun permits. Shop keepers noted that women increasingly purchase guns, accounting for a third of customers now where once they were seldom seen.

The FBI also noted the rising popularity of guns post Sandy Hook by reporting 39% rise in background checks to set a new monthly record.

Directly following the Sandy Hood tragedy, the Pew Research Center for People and Press conducted a poll where still only half the polled believed the gun control superseded the American right to bear arms.

Pew did note the 65% of respondents believed that assault weapon ownership made the nation more dangerous – not safer. The typical concealed pistol, however, now, by and large, classifies as assault due to its automatic capabilities.

So while the liberal media played shock journalism and pointed fingers at conservatives during the Presidential decree to join the residents and victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in grief, the nation continued to arm itself.

David Gregory, in a December 23 broadcast of ‘Meet the Press,’ illegally brandished an automatic magazine banned from the District of Columbia to shock his viewership into appeasing liberals who wish to criminalize guns and their culture.

Ironically, as police investigated his brazen behavior, the President of the United States paid a surprise visit to boost ratings of the flagging show and talk about his take of the Fiscal Cliff talks.

Perhaps there is a cognitive dissonance in the media.

President Obama himself, in a pre-taped discussion with Barbara Walters on ‘Nightline’, December 26, joked that he ran for President so that his daughters could hang out with ‘men with guns.’ Both the President and Chicago Major Rahm Emanuel send their children to schools with an armed guard.

And yet the liberal media cries foul when the NRA concluded its Sandy Hook silence to propose a Federal mandate to arm all schools such that the misbegotten can not so hideously waltz into institutions of learning and commit murder.

So Thurday, January 3, the Sandy Hook Elementary School reopened under armed guard. A concerned police presence identified grown-ups and insured the students that they went to the most secure school in America.

Marlboro, New Jersey followed similar protocols, posting an armed and uniformed officer at each of the eight elementary schools and middle schools.

Since 2007, the Harrods, Texas school board has allowed for teachers to carry concealed weapons to ensure a minimal level of protection in the face of a stringent budget that does not provide for an armed guard.

Spokespeople for Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnestota, South Dakota and Oregon have all stated that they will consider similar methods.

Indeed, the Fontana, California school district just bought 14 AR-15s to police itself.

President Clinton, in 2000, on the one year anniversary of the ignominious Columbine School shooting, announced $120 million in federal grants to promote his ‘COPS in Schools,’ program.

Certainly it is too soon for the rabid liberal media to admit that good-guys with guns stop bad-guys with guns.

Perhaps we will have to witness the Democratic machine stall in a contested political atmosphere before the sober minded remind the nation of the now bi-partisan wish to dedicate as much fire-power in the protection of our school children as we do to foreign wars.

Image Courtesy :  paljoakim

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New York, U.S.A. – Carnegie Mellon, Hult International Business School and NYU Abu Dhabi were honored for their commitment to eradicating poverty at the Hult Global Case Challenge in New York City, hosted by Hult International Business and the Clinton Global Initiative.

The three winning teams beat thousands of students from the world’s best business schools for a US$1 millioncash grant and
were honored by President Bill Clinton.

Started three years ago by Hult graduate Ahmad Ashkar, the Hult Global Case Challenge is the largest and most respected initiative of its kind. Harnessing the power of crowd sourcing, the Hult Global Case Challenge attracted students from 350 colleges and universities to provide solutions to the real challenges facing three NGOs. These are Habitat for Humanity, which builds affordable housing; SolarAid, which brings renewable energy to impoverished communities; and One Laptop Per Child, which provides low-cost computers to children.

A panel of high-profile judges including: Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Unilever Chairman Michael Treschow, social entrepreneur Darell Hammond, and the CEOs of the three NGOs, selected the winners in education, housing and energy.

Education               

Winner: Carnegie Mellon

To help One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) put 10 million laptops in the hands of children worldwide in the nextfive years, the Carnegie
Mellon team presented an innovative approach to ensure streamlined laptopdeployment and to create a global brand for the
NGO ’ s open-source software.

“The Hult Global Case Challenge has provided us with many ideas to address the challenge of scaling OLPC to enable learning for the world’s poorest children,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman and CEO of the One Laptop per Child Association. “We appreciate the creativity, passion and effort of all the student teams around the world who participated in the competition.”

Housing

Winner: Hult International Business School

Habitat for Humanity has a mission to provide homes for 50 million people within the next 10 years.
Hult ’s winning solution focuses on harnessing the intelligence of those at the bottom of the pyramid andequipping them to
solve their own problems.

“Hult’s Global Case Challenge is good news for everyone involved,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity. “Students have the opportunity to solve real-world challenges, and organizations like Habitat benefit — not only from the prize money used to implement the winning proposal, but also from the ideas that emerge from crowdsourcing and the relationships that we develop with tomorrow’s business leaders.”

Energy

Winner: NYU Abu Dhabi

Many Africans still rely on kerosene lamps. NYU Abu Dhabi ’ s solution focuses on creating a network ofentrepreneurs and
technicians who will sell and fix solar lamps in a sustainable way.

Speaking in support of the winning team’s solution, SolarAid CEO Steve Andrews said: “Our goal is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from Africa by the end of this decade. That’s simply a huge challenge, which will only be possible with massive innovation. Having the top students from around the world competing to come up with great ideas for how we will do this is an extraordinary boost. It’s already changing the way we think and work.”

Ahmad Ashkar, the founder and CEO of the Hult Global Case Challenge, said: “This initiative aims to revolutionize how we think about the world’s most pressing social challenges. With US$1 million in seed capital, students from all over the world have a chance to establish social enterprises that achieve real results.”

Congratulating the winning teams, Hult President Dr Stephen Hodges added: “The Hult Global Case Challenge is an important part of Hult’s push to encourage social entrepreneurship among talented students, whichever country they come from. Through this visionary kind of crowd sourcing we’re giving NGOs access to a wealth of new ideas and perspectives that help them grow stronger.”

Image Courtesy of  Jose Gil / Shutterstock.com

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Imagine a married man with two kids, and a great executive position in a multi-national company. Because of his position he makes excellent money that allows his wife to shop at her pleasure, but also makes his family a target for threats and kidnapping. He uses his money to hire security guards to protect his family, and to pay for a high-end alarm system for his home.

Now imagine that this man loses his job, but the threats to his family persist. He cannot afford both the shopping of his wife and the security guards for his family. To reduce expenses, he gets rid of the guards, and the alarm system, but keeps giving his wife money to shop for shoes as she wishes.

Doesn’t that scenario seem a bit odd? Wouldn’t it be more responsible to cut the shopping and continue to pay for the needed security of the man’s family?

The scenario painted above is the exact one facing the U.S. regarding the security and defense of the country. In the real world, President Obama is the man, and his family is the United States population. His decision last month to reduce the size and scope of the military is just like the man’s decision to get rid of security guards that are protecting his family from kidnapping, to save money.

The United States is facing a fiscal crisis that has the potential to send the country into an economic tailspin. With a national debt of 16 trillion dollars, and yearly spending at a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit, President Obama knows that cuts need to be made in spending.  Following in the grand tradition of liberal Democrats before him, he is trying to solve the problem by raising tax rates, and of course going after defense spending. This is wrong-headed, dangerous, and short sighted.

In his defense, President Obama, is not doing anything that other politicians have not done. Long before Obama stepped onto the scene, President Herbert Walker Bush began cutting troop levels. Clinton followed suit with the closing of numerous bases and offering what he termed, a “peace dividend.” Truth be told, politicians have been cutting the military first, ever since the time of Rome and Carthage.  It is an easy foil, but always has consequences that are bad.

The problem is that no one, politicians or generals, are any good at predicting the future of military conflicts. During the Korean War, it was determined that since we had long-range missiles on our fighter jets, we didn’t need guns on them or needed to bother teaching dog fighting (aerial combat) skills. The result? U.S. planes were getting shot out of the sky left and right. Forcing the air force to spend money to retro fit the planes with guns, and bringing fighter pilots out of retirement to teach dog fighting.

At the start of the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld determined that the U.S. would use a lean and mean war effort. The result was huge casualties, because troops were spread thin, and fatigued from multiple tours that came because of the troop reductions that Bush and Clinton made in the 1990’s.

Now, President Obama is doing the same thing. Cutting troops, reducing spending on hardware like fighters and aircraft carriers. Instead, they will use more drones, and a focus on elite forces like the Seals, and Special Forces. The rationale being that there will be no large-scale wars in the future.

Aside from the fact they cannot know that, even current conditions could point to that view being totally wrong. Drone air attacks have been very successful, but that’s partly due to the desert environment of the Middle East. Drones are practically useless in the jungles of Southeast Asia, or South America. Drones will not be able to see through the canopy of jungle trees, so they cannot be fully utilized as though they are in Afghanistan, or Iraq.

China is continuing to build up its military—new fighters, ships, drones– Russia is a sleeping bear that reared its ugly head two years ago in Georgia, and who knows what will happen in the middle east between the Muslim world and Israel. All around the globe there are warm spots of conflict, a spark away from flaring into hot spots of war and strife.

Lastly, relying on elite forces ignores the fact that the people in them take a long time to train, and do need breaks in deployment. Have we not learned that lesson from the wars of the last ten years? By reducing the force numbers,—already too low—we hamper our ability to handle conflict in different locations.

It’s not a stretch to see us mired in the Middle East again, while simultaneously dealing with terrorists in African, Asia, and problems in South America. Of course, it’s easy to say, “We just don’t need to get involved so much.’ But who says we have a choice? We were not in some protracted war before 9/11, but they attacked us anyway.

The reality is that we increase our troops, and spend money on military hardware, not for what happens three years from now, but what happens 10, 15, or 20 years from now. The hardware we used in the first Iraq war was developed during the Reagan years. President Obama, and our military leaders have no clue about what will happen in the next 10 years. They can guess, but every time they decisions like this in the past, they have been wrong. So it is better to over prepare, and under utilize, rather than be under prepared and have to scramble to catch up.

The world is a complicated and dangerous place. A weak America makes it more dangerous, not less. Especially for American citizens that may live or die based on the decisions our leaders are making today. If we cut the military, the country, and indeed some places in the world, shall end up paying the price. A price far higher in blood and tears than the price of what we’re spending on the military now.

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The Eye on Earth Summit, held in Abu Dhabi from December 12-15, brings together the world’s foremost thinkers about environmental information to reflect on how we can ensure that decision-makers everywhere make wiser decisions. Dozens of speakers with the caliber of President Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, UAE President H.E. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the Conservation International boss, Russell Mittermeier, are helping delegates formulate concrete recommendations for the next Earth Summit to be held in Rio in June 2012.

Access to environmental knowledge is critical: wise decision-making depends on it. As the COP-17 climate conference in Durban, South Africa, recently showed, it is becoming urgent to address the world’s ability to prepare for coming changes to our planet. Environmental information is becoming increasingly precious.

However, much of this information is unavailable, even when it already exists. It may be absent, inaccessible, or simply hidden. Much of it is held in incompatible standards, ‘protected’ by bureaucratic complexity, restrained by lack of open access, or kept in the dark through ignorance of its existence.

Emerging economies in particular are at risk of losing valuable assets because of decisions taken without full knowledge. Yet making more environmental information available to them and others need not be expensive or especially complicated. What is needed, above all, is collaboration, information, and understanding of the problems caused by unavailable data.

Water scarcity, food security, and climate change are policy issues that require solutions that extend beyond political boundaries.

This VNR contains short, impactful statements by the following distinguished speakers:

- H.E. Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary General, Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi

- Jack Dangermond, CEO & President, Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri)

- John E. Scanlon, Secretary General, Conservational on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)

- President Bill Clinton

- Sha Zukang, UN Undersecretary General and Secretary General of the Rio +20 Summit

- Dr. Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

- Hernando de Soto, President, Institute for Liberty & Democracy

- Dr. Jane Goodall, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute

- Chief Almir Surui, Amazon Indigenous Leader

- Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director, European Environmental Agency

Dave Newman / Shutterstock.com

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